river bank
by suicidebycyanide
Summary: ONESHOT / Spring 1998 was the year Rita met Mark and became his victim. —Rita.
_**RIVER BANK**_

* * *

Rita's clueless to how she's arrived at the river bank, as far as she was aware she didn't live near one. All she could think was that she's been running further than she imagined, trying to escape her thoughts.

With hands on knees she leans over trying to catch her breath. Running, how it's such a therapy of expanding her mind, making her thoughts seem small and ridiculous. Except this one. No amount of running was going to get rid of this one.

 _Mark._

Her heart skipped a beat in fear. Mark, her ex-husband. The child molester, the abusive husband, the man she spent years being afraid of. The man she spent too long loving over and over again, convinced she was somehow at fault for all the bite marks and bruises he inflicted on her.

She sank down to her knees on the edge of the river.

1998\. Spring 1998. Oh how she remembers the night well, the night she met Mark Ritchie. She was young and reckless, trying to impress her friends by drinking whatever drink it was they brought her. He's impressed, comes over with a drink which she sips in a second. She wakes up in the morning naked with no recollection of anything. She just presumes she's drank too much, doesn't realise he poured GHB into her drink.

Rita's pretty much hooked from day one to Mark Ritchie.

He's _everything_ she looks for in a man. He's ever so charming and everything's brilliant. He takes her out for dinner, cooks for her, buys her flowers. The change is subtle at first that she doesn't even notice she's being controlled.

Until the day he snaps, explodes like a bomb.

He hurts her. Badly. Throws her against a wall, strangles her, bites her, leaves marks on every inch of skin she can easily hide. The reason is simple, she should've made his tea earlier. His tea should've been ready when he arrived home from work not still cooking.

Rita stays even though she knows it'll never change.

The cycle continues — he beats her, he apologises and she forgives him.

Rita laughs out loud at the river side which attracts the attention of a young couple nearby. They stare at her for a moment or two before leaving. Rita continues to laugh as she remembers why she became addicted to the sweet alcoholic stuff.

She didn't even realise at first she was dependent on alcohol. It was just a drink after a beating to numb the pain of the bruises and bite marks. Knocking back a bottle of vodka every time Mark went to the pub was the only way she was able to sleep through the pain.

It became a bottle a day quicker than she realised it would.

When he went to prison, she saw that as her chance to escape her unhappiness. She left him even though she was scared too. She hadn't been on her own for years, she was afraid of the unknown but she knew if she didn't leave now, she'd die at his hands.

That's when she moved to Holby, told everyone her husband was dead.

It wasn't exactly a lie, he was dead to her. He became dead the minute he abused that young fourteen year old. Rita tried her hardest to heal in Holby. She attended therapy to try and gain control of the abusive relationship that made her into a shadow of the woman she was.

She knows it wasn't enough.

He turns up twice. The first time she temporarily relapses into alcohol again until she realises that is exactly what he wants her to do. Break apart every time he arrives because he knows he can play mind games with her, still manipulate her like before.

Rita's stronger the second time he turns up in the Emergency Department. She refuses to be a victim this time — she's stronger right?

"You're not going to ruin things for me," she hisses into his ear but he laughs and grabs her wrist. He laughs because he can hear the fear in her voice and the fear behind her eyes. She's scared of him and that's all he needs. He knows he's presence destroys Rita every time.

The second time he arrives is when Rita realises she'll never be free, not really.

She'll always be looking over her shoulder, afraid that Mark will turn up and ruin things. She feels sad that she won't ever be free, she'll never settle down the way things should've been. She scrolls through her phone, finds Iain's number and sends him a simple message.

 _Goodbye xx_

Rita throws her mobile phone into the pond, stands up and starts to run again. Again she doesn't know where it is she's going but she needs to go somewhere, she can't live in Mark's shadow forever, wondering if he's there and going to ruin her life like last time.

She's runs out into the middle of the road, into the path of an oncoming lorry. She freezes as she stares at the lorry getting closer and closer to her. She hears the screech of the tyres on the tarmac before it hits her and sends her flying.

As she crashes to the floor and blackness begins to surround her, she wishes she'd never met Mark Ritchie in 1998. Maybe if she could go back to 1998, maybe her entire life wouldn't have being so tragic.

* * *

 _jottings_ / I guess you can think of your own ending to this. If you liked it, please leave me a review, thank you.


End file.
